Why do people get tattoos?

This is much simpler than what Maori guys are wearing – which is horrific – but it is nonetheless questionable, purely on aesthetic grounds.

You no longer see her skin. Instead, you see this artifice. Which is not even interesting or meaningful in some way. One has to ask: why not put it on paper instead? Indeed, it would be much more accessible that way. But no, she has to put it on the back of her arm . . .

It tells some kind of story? Okay, maybe. But why not put it in diary instead? What’s the point of writing your stories on your body?

No, it’s not meaningful. There is absolutely no sound reason to cover your body with tattoos other than “I am bored”.

It is on the same level as some guy walking in the middle of the crowd carrying a sign that says “I AM GAY IF YOU TOO ARE GAY PLEASE COME SAY HI I WANT TO FALL IN LOVE”.

Yes, he’s expressive; great, he wants to be heard, find himself a soulmate; but how intelligent or civilized is such an approach? Isn’t it depressing? Isn’t that a sign of social degeneration? Who among the civilized expresses themselves in such a way?

…which is why I watch it umpteen times in a row when I watch it.

Don’t think I have, but from the trailer I see they’re a rowdy bunch :neutral_face: I wonder if they have moments of tranquility and quiet meditation… or may be only when they are asleep. 8-[ My oldest (half) sister is like that… gets it from her dad.

There is beauty in tradition… because it has meaning, and yes… they wear it well. :smiley:

I remember the other South Pacific Islanders having similar tribal tattoos, but after looking them up they vary enormously from island to island… reflective of their different cultures I guess.

Polynesian:

google.co.uk/search?q=polyn … ent=safari

Fijian:

google.co.uk/search?q=fijia … whZfg_11:2

MA wrote:

I imagine that at some not so distant point in the future someone will start a thread titled “why do people lick their anuses?” naturally, of course, because by that time people will be so degenerate that licking one’s anus would be just as normal as it is normal today to have a tattoo on your body, and amidst the responses to that thread there will be one which would staunchly defend the practice of licking one’s anus by appealing to the history of now extinct species called animals and no sense could be called into that person for he would fail to realize that animals aren’t equal to humans and that, no, you can’t just isolate practices and make them equal by arguing that they belong to different epochs.

My point is that Maoris are a primitive people with very poor sense for what is beautiful.

They are, quite simply, ugly.

What they lack is critical element.

They make too many unnecessary movements – excess of creative element – which leads to redundancy, obscurity, noise, needless complexity, etc.

Think of jazz music and its countless wasted notes . . notes that mean absolutely nothing and that wouldn’t have been there if the person playing them applied some filtering to them.

Jazz music is black music, right? You appear to be fond of black people . . .

Think of rappers and their excessive hand and other body movements . . . think of their speech too.

Maoris are no different. They are spammers.

You knock sophisticated Jazz… in favour of what?

So does European baroque style… flamboyant, emotive and very religious. Yet, it is considered by many as one of the most beautiful artistic styles in the world.

You must be one of those people who listens to Handel for relaxation. :laughing: But seriously, maybe we should first address the whole purpose of making music. According to this doc, the original purpose of music was to share common emotional states and to bond. Since we are social animals, it can also be seen as an extension of grooming activity, and it is essentially emotional. I think you might be one of the people who think that anything outside classical music is not really music, but then I’d have to ask, what is music for, evolutionary speaking? And if the music does not emotionally move you, has it fulfilled its function? I don’t know about you, but for me, if wanted to actively work my brain on picking up on complex auditory patterns/sounds (critical/logical processing), I might just choose to listen to Morse code messages or learn different bird calls, or foreign language, instead.

Will you accept a medical reason?
dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ … eutic.html

MA writes:

You just don’t get it and your pedantic attitude exposes a feminine spirit.

You are like white bread, no nourishment left in you.

The first hakas were created and performed by different Maori tribes as a war dance. It is an ancestral war cry. It was performed on the battlefields for two reasons. Firstly, it was done to scare their opponents; the warriors would use aggressive facial expressions such as bulging eyes and poking of their tounges. They would grunt and cry in an intimidating way, while beating and waving their weapons. The second reason they did this was for their own morale; they believed that they were calling upon the god of war to help them win the battle. They were heavily choreographed and performed in time. It gave them courage and strength. This type of haka is called a peruperu haka.

“Ka Mate” is a haka that has been the haka most performed by the All Blacks when they play against international teams. It is a ceremonial haka, and it was written by Te Rauparaha. It is a celebration of life triumphing over death.

youtu.be/yiKFYTFJ_kw

It exudes masculinity that today has become a rare quality.

I have a bunch of tattoos, I got them because I was bored.

Magnus, how can you not like jazz? You’re crazy man.

Or you can simply listen to jazz music:
youtu.be/z-z6n0gm918

Which is my point.

The creative element generates ideas, options, possibilities, etc. The critical element, on the other hand, is that which applies filter to generated ideas. It is what separates the good from the bad.

The excess of creative element produces unnecessarily complex, noisy, random patterns which can then only be enjoyed mechanically, as a game of prediction, with little to no emotion involved, what you refer to as “critical/logical processing”.

That’s the problem of jazz music. Also the problem of baroque, which you mentioned, and virtuoso music in general.

The purpose of music, I would say, guess more or less in agreement with the documentary that you linked (but that I cannot see), is to represent emotions.

Though this is not always the case. In some instances, the purpose is merely to demonstrate the skill of a musician or the power of some technology. In such a case, a piece of music is nothing but a collage of all sorts of difficult-to-play or never-heard-before musical movements, sort of tech demo, producing an emotion no one can relate to because noone ever experienced it naturally.

A piece of music is supposed to reflect some naturally occurring emotion. As such, its content, the movements it is made out of, must have near absolute correspondence to the content of the represented, naturally occurring, emotion.

We say such a piece has soul . . . for no other reason than because it corresponds, with high level of precision, to some emotional dynamic we can relate to because it is something we have experienced naturally in our past.

The purpose of music is to imitate emotions.
The purpose of dancing is to imitate music.

Emotions → music → dancing

When this chain is broken, as it is today, strange things happen.

We now have dancers who do not even dance to music let alone to some naturally occurring emotion. You can change the music they are dancing to, even turn it off, and it won’t make any difference, because their dancing is highly independent, merely meant to show all the difficult moves they can perform.

And the choice of moves they perform is grounded in nothing but difficulty . . . what is difficult is automatically good, what is easy is automatically boring. So you can see plenty of ugly, awkward, moves performed merely because they require skill, in the same way you can hear all sorts of awkward sounds, e.g. farts, in jazz music.

Many consider silence, and slowing down, to be undesirable: performers, because such movements do not display much skill; audience, because people are restless, emotionally degenerate, incapable of pausing.

Division of labor is responsible for this, I would say. The benefits it has are not without the costs.

Composers, fewer in numbers, are responsible for tapping into their memory, selecting aspects of their past they consider to be of high value, and then choosing the best sequence of tonal movements that mimics them. Performers, greater in number, are responsible for carrying out the task set by the composer.

Performers are physical . . . they make physical movements they are told to make.
Composers are mental . . . they select, filter, attune, connect, etc.

The problem occurs when composers die out – being fewer in number, they are the first to die out – and all we are left with are performers who then attempt to be composers but without much success.

We live in the age of lower castes – artisans, performers, etc – trying to play the role of the now long dead higher castes.

What happens to children when they lose their parents?

With all that out of the way, I will say that, as someone who’s forced to endure VH1 music every morning, I’d rather listen to jazz than to motherfucking starboy.

Modern pop music is terrible . . .

I think this is the point of tattoos - it sends a message. First and foremost a tattoo is a label – I am a bad ass; I am sexy; I am smart; I am beautiful; I love my son or mom – the list goes on and on. Tattoo’s say something to us and the people that see them. Tattoo’s always deliver a message. It seems reasonable to me that people get tattoos in order to say something.

What is not so obvious, especially to the people who get tattoos, is that the opposite message is also sent. If you have to tell someone that you are a bad ass, smart or beautiful – you have some doubt these qualities or attributes are true. Insecurity and self-esteem seems to go hand and hand with getting and displaying tattoos.

Yes, it is a label.

Greeks associated them, I mean tattoos, with barbarians; with primitive people who have too much of warrior instinct in themselves and too little of other instincts (e.g. social instincts, which is why such people tend to be divided, constantly in war with each other, unable to organize themselves.)

It’s probable to say that people who are fond of tattoos are identifying themselves with barbarians. The bad ass look, and that attitude in general, is only part of it.

I understand that tattoos can be used, and are often used, to express certain thoughts and feelings but I also understand that such a form of expression indicates inability to communicate to others one’s feelings and thoughts using honest, clear and direct means, instead redirecting these impulses to hidden places hoping they will be discovered one day. It indicates asocial behavior, which again is in line with barbarism.

Women are attracted to them I assume because they were unprotected as children and still are unprotected as adults which led to them losing their feminine instincts and reverting back to barbarism.

There are rumors circulating on this forum that A Shieldmaiden might in fact be a man.

and :mrgreen:

You remind me of my dad: he’d always refer to piercings and tattoos as “mutilating the body”.

But you seem to answer you’re own question, Shieldy. Why would one want to scar/mutilate their own body? Because to them it’s not scarring/mutilation, it’s self-expression, exposing their inner self to the world.

It can, but usually for me, it gives off the impression of what kind of person she is on the inside, which can add to or take away from her attractiveness.

No, they are not. They are a personal preference. One or two little beautiful and meaningful tattoos situated just in the right spot can be enhancing…for instance, a baby dragon and a baby dragonfly. lol Like a body avatar.

It’s just when they become like a run-away train or an addiction, a substitute for something “going on” within, when they can be viewed as ugliness or inordinately disturbing. I think that sometimes when there are too many it’s a question of hiding a “self” that doesn’t want to be seen.

Wow, I never thought of it like that before. You could be on to something.

I’m trying to imagine if you’re the type to have a tattoo or not, Arc. ← Idunno… hmmm :-k … Don’t tell me, I wanna be in suspense for a bit. :laughing:

It is no different than putting on makeup or a mask.

Somewhat different. Tattoos are about self-expression (usually) whereas makeup is about enhancing attractiveness (usually).

Pride and ego.